9:31 a.m.
I'm at a desolate, deserted Souter Point on England's gloomy north-east coast. And I'm far from happy.
A near total eclipse of the sun is happening right now. More or less directly above my head. I've never seen one before, and as far as I know today will be the closest I ever get to witnessing this most unlikely of celestial coincidences*.
I've decided to make a day of it, since the agency I work for don't seem to need my services this week. I packed three chocolate bars, a Conference pear - at its optimum ripeness - and bought two butcher's pork pies in Whitburn in case the ancients were right and this really is the end of the world.
All for nothing. Clouds everywhere. Joni Mitchell could have penned an album's worth of lyrics just by looking up at the sky.
At least it's got darker - well, a bit. More depressing would be a better way to describe things.
9:37 a.m.
I get a text from a friend. It includes a quote from God. "An eclipse, you say? Have ALL the cloud. EVER."
It comes fifteen seconds too late. I've spotted a crescent-shaped sliver of light where the cloud's thinnest. It only lasts a moment or two, but there can be no doubt as to what I saw.
Or how utterly humble I now feel.
9:53 a.m.
I get another glimpse, slightly longer this time. A jogger lopes past, oblivious of what he's missing. I notice he's had his right calf tattooed, and realise that nothing we will ever do on this planet will make the smallest difference to the future of the universe.
9:58 a.m.
The clouds begin to break up. I'm treated to a good three minutes of uninterrupted eclipsoid bliss. Only now, as the moon's shadow becomes too small to hide the glare, do I appreciate that without the cloud cover I wouldn't have been able to stare directly at the sun.
God - were such an entity to exist - has gone up in my estimation.
*I refer of course to the fact that the sun's diameter is roughly 400 times bigger than the moon's, but as it's also roughly 400 times further away the two bodies appear to be the same size from an earthbound point of view.
Music!
https://youtu.be/tY8Lcc4ILk0
Comments
Eclipse
It was pants in Newcastle, too. The feed from Kielder to the big screen at the Monument went down at the crucial moment. By dint of whizzing around Byker and the East Quayside on my bike I managed to get some atmospheric glimpses, but none of my photos came out. I was in Germany for the total eclipse in 1999. At exactly 35 seconds to totality, a huge cloud covered the sun. It moved away a minute and a half later. :(
Distant Sunshine
Just be careful.
Please, do not stare at the eclipse, without proper eye protection.
Good Advice
I thoroughly endorse your advice.
But in this part of the world we've been staring at the sun since humans settled here. Now and again we actually see it.
Grey
On the Surrey-Sussex border too, arsebollocks. A beautiful afternoon as well! For those who are unfamiliar with the area, Souter Point light is near Marsden, a place I used a lot in the Jill Carter bools. It isn't far from Newcastle, where, as they say, for four months of the year it is cold, wet and windy. The rest of the year is Winter.
Don't look at the eclipse...
...with the second eye! :-)
Eclipse
Taken with my phone camera a minute or so after totality. The small crescent is not the moon but the sun. Weymouth, Dorset.
Angharad
Too bad you don't live here
We can drive to where the sunshines. It sounds as though where you live is like the sunset district of San Francisco. Every one asks how the sunset got it's name. As the story goes when they developed the area in the nineteen thirties, the sun set and they haven't seen it since. Arecee
Sunshine
We had bright sunshine from about an hour after it happened for the rest of the day.
Angharad
Clouds are nature's sunblock
I'm sorry you missed the full effect, but it does seem like one of the universe's cosmic jokes to have an eclipse on an overcast day. Oh well. at least the truly reckless were unable to blind themselves.
Here in the northeast US we welcomed the first day of spring with the season's first snowstorm. I'm a bit envious of your less-than-ideal eclipse.
There will be more. In due time. May you be out and about to savor them, and may the clouds be nowhere in sight.
Last minute thing
Thursday evening I decide I really ought to do something about watching it and, having a reasonable dread of going blind, made a pinhole in a piece of card. (Actually, I made three holes, the one the size of a pin, the other the size of my kitchen skewer and the third of a hole punch.)
Here in the South West, it was a bright sunny morning, so I went onto my doorstep and held up my piece of card and focussed the three blobs of light onto another.
Problem was, it looked like my holes weren't clean enough and the sun had a tiny lump missing out of one side so I spent some time with my pin and skewer trying to clean up the edges. Tried it again and the lump had got even worse.
Dong! I was seeing the eclipse!!!
With my stupid bits of card, I was seeing something incredible. I also watched it on the Internet from a site in Newquay. They had a better picture and it was in colour, but it wasn't half as emotive as mine.
It never really got dark here, just more dawn like, but it did get quite chilly.
As a matter of interest, the pinhole produced better definition, but was very faint; the hole punch was bright but never really in focus, so the skewer won the day. Who'd have thought: my kitchen skewer was really an astronomical tool!
Charlotte
"the pinhole produced better
"the pinhole produced better definition, but was very faint"
Pinholes do that, it's why a pinhole camera works without a lens. If you need glasses try looking through one and be amazed (you could also try making one by curling a finger).
I missed the eclipse
glad you got some good out of your adventure